Social networking service providers facilitate creating, distributing, and exchanging social media between users in virtual communities called social networks. Service providers include, for example, FACEBOOK and TWITTER. These service providers offer interactive online portals that are accessible through client devices such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. Depending on the social network, a user can register with a service provider, create a profile, add other users to their social networks, exchange social media, and receive notifications from the service provider. A user may join different social networks to share social media of common interest to a single user or an entire group of users in a particular social network.
There are many types of service providers. Some are focused on facilitating building personal networks based on friendships or social interests, such as FACEBOOK and TWITTER. Others are more focused on building professional relationships by connecting users with similar career interests, and allow users to market themselves in social networks, such as LINKEDIN. Other social networks, such as YOUTUBE and FLICKR, are more directed to facilitating the sharing of multimedia, such as pictures, audio and video. However, the differences between social networks are becoming fewer as service providers continue to add additional functionality.
User profiles are provided by some social media service providers, and include fields for users to input limited demographic information, such as a name and location. However, many service providers fail to request or store any demographic information about their users. Thus, most profiles linked to social media include limited, or fail to include any, fields for users to input demographic information. Moreover, user-provided demographics available by social networking service providers are limited and unreliable because users may not disclose demographic information or may disclose incorrect demographic information. Consequently, there is no reliable way to determine or predict user demographics about authors of social media.